The Age of Complacency

Let me preface this post by saying that I think the web is a magnificent creation. I, like any person with access to the net, am wholly dependent on it for several of my daily activities. Heck, I would probably be out of a job without it. I wrote this solely because I wanted to express something about what I think is an adverse effect of being so dependent on it.

The Internet is a many-splendored thing. It’s both a gift and a curse – you have all the information in the world available at your fingertips; however it facilitates the loss of several things… Let’s look at a couple of cases to illustrate this point.

• Story time! I studied for about a month, maybe longer, for my GRE examination. For the uninformed, a considerable chunk of the examination involves you proving to the American government that you are capable of substantial thought in the English language. This is rather hypocritical because it involves learning words that you can be assured will not come up in conversation with the average American. However I wasn’t complaining, as I appreciated an excuse to expand my (limited) vocabulary.
  Learning for the exam involved poring over word-list upon word-list, trying to recollect the meaning of every adjective or verb you would have ever encountered, stuff that you would probably be taking for granted – it’s a whole other story to coherently articulate the meaning of words like “coherent” and “articulate”. The Barron’s Big Book was pretty comprehensive, and covered a huge variety of words – imagine if you will, the little arrow going from the A to the Z in the Amazon logo. I learnt and re-learnt, and this exercise definitely improved my vocabulary. And it was fun! I enjoyed learning new words, going so far as to learning their origins and usages. For that, I am indebted to the Internet. I had a wide vocabulary at my fingertips.
  There’s an innate difference between the spoken word and the written one, the colloquialism of which is jarring. Today, one has a dictionary.com or a thesaurus.com to guide you into using bigger words than normal just to sound more erudite (thanks Barron’s!), something you couldn’t refer to a mere 20 years ago. It is reminiscent of the scene in Friends where Joey uses a thesaurus for every word in his recommendation letter to the NYC government to facilitate Chandler and Monica’s adoption (he goes so far as to signing it “Baby Kangaroo Tribbiani”, heh). Here’s a link for the interested (hey there’s something else you couldn’t do 20 years ago!).
• In my first ever quiz (conducted for the Coimbatore Quiz Circle back in 2008), I had an “About the QM” column in which I had very succinctly said “Wikipedia is my religion and Jimmy Wales is God. \m/”, which was true at the time. I was fully dependent on Wikipedia as my knowledge bank, having graduated from newspapers and Malayala Manorama (ah, Young World School Quiz memories). Still am. I have read so much on that website that it has become an information overload. Have I retained what I have read? Some, maybe. Not a whole lot.
• I was an avid reader a couple of years ago, during the era of dumb-phones and 256 kbps broadband connections. I would read at night, before falling asleep. I would read in the loo, to pass the time. Today I have a smartphone and I tend to browse Reddit for about 45 minutes before falling asleep, and tend to do the same in the loo. This is more a testament of a personal lack of willpower than anything else, but I figure the Internet and AT&T have some small part in enabling this. There’s also a personal urge to stay connected, so much so that it becomes crippling when I realize my network is down. It’s a dependency which I am not comfortable with, and I know that I am not the only one.

Technology has progressed to such an extent that today an inevitable sense of complacency tends to envelop the person. Before the advent of the Internet, one had to refer to a dictionary and an encyclopedia to learn more about things. One would make notes and highlight the words that s/he wants to look at, thus having a higher retention of the same. I still remember a massive copy of Webster’s English Dictionary that my father owned. This was an over 1000-page tome with a giant eagle in the front cover. I vividly recall going through the book, being extra careful as I was flipping the yellowing pages because I was afraid I might tear something. I recall finding several words which were highlighted in a fluorescent yellow-green color. I recall looking up the meaning of words like “arachnophobia” and a few words which (I hope!) any pre-pubescent boy would have gone through. I’m not sure where the book is now, although I know that I might probably never use it even if I knew since all the words I would ever need are available on the Internet. And being connected 24×7 makes it that much easier to sound more learned than usual. Also, I know that I can google anything to prove a point. Is this a bad thing?

Today’s generation has so much more access to information when compared to previous ones. Does this equate to them being smarter? No idea. But there is, undeniably, a  massive number of doctors, engineers, lawyers, artists, writers and what-have-you in the market today. I equate this in small measure to the “anybody with a digital camera considers himself a photographer” stereotype. I have never subscribed to that stereotype, as it does require a modicum of talent to become a photographer. However a digital camera is a good start on the road to become one. In a similar (but not the same) way the Internet enables several of the professions mentioned.

The inordinate number of people with talent out there has no doubt stagnated the market for it to become a cesspool of sorts. I ask again, is this a bad thing?

I do think the web is marvelous. I also wish, on a personal level, that I didn’t depend on it so much.

It remains to be seen what the future holds. I for one, am excited at the prospect of flying cars, sentient robots and the stuff that dreams (and sci-fi movies) are made of. Who knows, the future may see Webster’s dictionary and the (sadly defunct in print form) Encyclopedia Britannica come back in a big way. And that, would be cool.

This year, if nothing else, I resolve to get my reading habit back. Let’s see how that goes.